LITMIR.BIZ

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the details up to a select few, wanting to distance himself from the actual deed as much as possible. Blame had a way of smearing once it was voiced, and at all costs, he was trying to protect the sweet deal that had all but fallen into his lap at a time when he most needed it.

      Wouldn’t have needed anything if Susanne hadn’t turned out to be a first-class bitch, he thought darkly.

      It hadn’t been enough for her to up-end his life by divorcing him and taking away his daughters, she had to demand a pound of flesh from him as well. A monthly pound of flesh in the form of staggering alimony payments. It was like paying for a meal long after the dishes were cleared away. The alimony payments, on top of the child support he was doling out plus the alimony he was still paying to his first wife, had turned him into a man with his back pressed against a wall full of sharp, rusty nails. He was desperate.

      That was how El Jefe had found him, desperate. The self-proclaimed new kingpin of the Central American drug trade had a nose for desperate men who could be useful to him. The partnership they had struck up proved to be a lucrative one for both of them. Drug money came into the States, to be carefully banked and deposited via money orders into a bank account he’d personally set up for El Jefe’s legitimate holding company, Emeralda. The money went back to El Jefe for business transactions, minus a healthy cut for his part in the laundering.

      It enabled Stone to pay his debts, his monthly penance—alimony, he thought cynically, the wound that keeps on giving—and still have a nice piece of change to squirrel away at the end of each month until the day he could convince Joan Cooper to marry him.

      That was all he wanted, a fresh start with a good, decent woman and enough money to buy and sell this godforsaken little hellhole he found himself in charge of.

      But the operation required more than just his being involved. By its very nature, it required that he take men into his confidence to use as his soldiers. So he found them. Men he trusted as much as he was willing to trust anyone. They’d formed what he laughingly referred to as The Lion’s Den, taking the name from the pin the mayor had been awarding people within town for services rendered beyond the call of duty for the past ten years or so. Stone had taken to giving a pin of his own to the men he entrusted to serve him. The only difference being that the lion in his pin had three legs rather than four. The way the pin was fashioned, the difference wasn’t noticeable unless you were looking for it.

      That was how they all knew one another within this secret society of theirs. But Stone wasn’t some blind optimist, willing just to let things see to themselves of their own accord. He watched the men who held not only their fate but inadvertently his in their hands. Watched them like a hawk. Ordinarily. But this one time, he’d rested a little too easy, relying on Yance’s extensive expertise with explosives. There was supposed to be none better.

      All it had gotten him was two dead citizens and one possible live witness. None of whom had been his original target.

      Stone lowered his voice to keep it from carrying out of the office. “Then who did screw up?” he demanded. “You were the one with the dynamite, you were the one who planted it in the display right by the table that’d been reserved—”

      Ingram’s small eyes narrowed into slits. “I set it for five minutes after the hour the reservation was made for. As agreed.”

      “You should have set it for ten minutes after the hour,” Stone retorted.

      “Then we should have agreed to ten,” Ingram countered.

      The argument was going nowhere. And even if it were resolved, it wouldn’t change anything, Stone thought darkly. He was supposed to be resting easy at this point, not find himself in the middle of a mess. Now everyone was waiting for him to head up a task force to investigate the bombing.

      Rumors were already flying right and left as to its origin. Some, like that bubbleheaded Brannigan woman, thought it might be the work of terrorists, while others thought it might even be a disgruntled club member, taking out his frustration. Still others thought it was the work of the Texas mob. Nobody even came close to the real reason and he meant to make sure it remained that way.

      The short fuse that comprised his temper insisted on lighting anyway. “Damn it, Ingram, it was your job to make sure this kind of thing didn’t happen.”

      His nerves taut, Ingram’s face turned almost beet-red as he snapped, “I’m not God, boy.”

      Stone ran a narrow, almost artistic-looking hand through his hair, cursing roundly. The opportunity had passed. His target had left the grounds shaken, but unscathed. Which meant that everything he’d worked so hard to build up might be in jeopardy.

      If his connection to El Jefe ever came to light…

      Shaking his head, he forced the thought aside. Right now, he had a more immediate problem to deal with right here in his own backyard.

      The apology to Ingram nearly choked him, but he needed the man, now more than ever.

      With effort, he forced it out, then turned his attention to damage control.

      Pulling up in the driveway, right in front of the fire truck that the men had just finished cleaning after the ordeal at the country club, Tracy cheerfully announced to Adam, “This is your stop.”

      She’d gone more than a little out of her way to drop the firefighter at his station, but she didn’t mind. The drive over from the hospital would have been a silent one had she not kept up a steady stream of conversation. For all intents and purposes, it was more of a monologue than a conversation, garnering little more than grunts and one-word answers from the noble firefighter sitting in the passenger seat of her ’95 Mustang convertible.

      “And I can’t say I’m not relieved,” she told him. When he looked at her quizzically, Tracy added with a bright smile, “You damn near talked my ear off.”

      The absurd comment coaxed what passed for a smile from Adam’s lips. After all, she had done him a favor, even if he hadn’t asked her to. “I’m not usually very talkative.”

      She widened her eyes in feigned surprise. “You’re kidding.”

      He snorted, getting out of the car. “Didn’t seem to bother you any, I noticed. You talk enough for three people.”

      Not three, she thought, but maybe two. “I don’t much care for silence,” she admitted.

      He preferred silence himself. “You should try it sometime,” he told her pointedly.

      Tracy took no offense. “Deal. If you try talking sometime.” Not about to leave herself open for a smart rejoinder, she shifted gears and began backing out of the driveway. “See you around, Collins,” she called out.

      Vince McGuire, a firefighter who had joined the staff at the fire station shortly after Adam had arrived, approached him, an appreciative look on his face as he watched Tracy pull away.

      “We’d wondered where you’d gotten to.” He nodded at the departing vehicle and its driver. “Bring back a souvenir from the fire?”

      Turning on his heel, Adam began walking into the fire station. He didn’t even bother looking at the other man. “Stick it in your ear, McGuire.”

      “That wasn’t exactly where I had in mind,” McGuire said with a laugh as he hurried to catch up.

      Chapter 3

      Adam sighed in frustration as he let the receiver drop into the cradle. It was raining outside the window of his first-floor apartment, one of those dark and gloomy January days that made people long for spring and feel it was never going to arrive.

      The mood within his apartment was just as dark and gloomy.

      He couldn’t get Jake Anderson off his mind.

      The boy was about the same age as his own son had been when he’d lost him. At first glance, Jake had even looked like Bobby, the same silky blond hair, the same slight, delicate build. And the eyes, there was just

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